State not responsible for death of woman in Tompkins County park rock slide, court rules

View full sizeStephen D. Cannerelli / The Post-StandardFile photo of Taughannock Falls State Park in Trumansburg.

Syracuse, NY - The state of New York cannot be held responsible for the death of a woman in a rock slide in Taughannock Falls State Park on the west shore of Cayuga Lake, a state appeals court has ruled.

In a 10-page decision, the state Supreme Court Appellate Division in Albany ruled Thursday the state had taken sufficient steps to protect visitors in the park by posting numerous signs warning hikers not to stray from designated trails.

That decision overturned Syracuse Court of Claims Judge Diane Fitzpatrick's June 2011 ruling that a trial was needed to decide the sufficiency of the warning signs in the park in Tompkins County.

Deborah Rowen, 51, of New Jersey, was standing in the plunge pool at the base of the 215-foot falls - in an area off limits to visitors - when she was struck in the head and buried beneath a rock slide from the face of the falls Aug. 22, 2005. She died later the same day in a hospital in Chemung County.

Her husband, Paul Arsenault, sued the state for Rowen's wrongful death and for injuries he and his two children sustained in the rock slide.

In her ruling last year, Fitzpatrick refused a state request to dismiss the lawsuit without the need for a trial. She concluded there was a question about the sufficiency of the signage and the reasonableness of the state's preventive actions given the number of people who ignored posted warning signs near the falls and the state's awareness of that fact.

The appellate court disagreed, noting it was "difficult to understand how (the victims) could have failed to appreciate the dangers posed" at the site, given photographs showing the dangerous rock-slide conditions at the falls.

It is not a questions of whether another type of sign would have persuaded the victims not to stray from the Gorge Trail to the off-limits area in the creek bed and plunge pool, that court noted. It's whether the five or six signs sufficiently warned of the specific danger presented, the court indicated.

The Albany court concluded they did, writing that "the fact that a relatively small group of people would disregard posted warning signs and violate park rules does not demonstrate either the existence of a pervasive enforcement problem or that defendant's efforts to curb such illegal conduct were deficient."

"Some determined hikers will follow a path of their own choosing to a desired destination regardless of the risk associated with that decision, the signs advising against it or the physical barriers impeding their progress," the appellate court concluded in reversing Fitzpatrick and dismissing the lawsuit.